Can you mine obsidian with an iron pickaxe in Minecraft?

You can break it, but you get nothing — the block is destroyed without dropping, and even a Silk Touch iron pickaxe does not change that. Only diamond and netherite pickaxes harvest obsidian.

How much obsidian do you need for a Nether portal?

Ten blocks minimum, arranged in a 4x5 frame with the four corners omitted (the corners can be any block or left empty). A full rectangular frame with corners takes fourteen blocks.

Can you make crying obsidian in Minecraft?

No. Crying obsidian cannot be crafted or created with water and lava. Find it in ruined portals and bastion remnant chests, or receive it from piglin bartering, and use it to craft respawn anchors.

What is the fastest way to get lots of obsidian?

Flood a large underground lava lake with water and mine the surface — that covers early and mid game. Late game, the End wins: the obsidian pillars regenerate whenever you respawn the Ender dragon, giving you a renewable supply.

How to Make Obsidian in Minecraft

Obsidian is not crafted at a table — it is born where lava meets water, usually by accident the first time. Understanding exactly which liquid combinations produce it (and which produce useless cobblestone instead) turns a lucky accident into a reliable supply of the toughest block you can gather in survival.

What You Need

Item	What It Is For
Iron bucket	Carrying water (and lava) — crafted from three iron ingots; you keep the bucket after pouring
Water	Flowing over lava source blocks to harden them
Lava source blocks	Each source block becomes exactly one obsidian block
Diamond or netherite pickaxe	The only tools that can harvest obsidian

The Liquid Rules That Matter

Interaction	Result
Water flows over a lava source	Obsidian
Water flows over flowing lava	Cobblestone
Flowing lava runs into water	Stone

Everything about obsidian farming comes back to that first row. Still lava — the flat, full blocks in a lava pool — becomes obsidian. The thin, moving edges of a lava flow become cobblestone. Flood pools, not streams.

How to Make Obsidian, Step by Step

Craft a bucket from three iron ingots (two at the sides of the top row, one in the center) and fill it with water from any pond or river.
Find a lava pool. Surface pools are easiest — they show up often in flat deserts — and big lakes fill caves deep underground.
Pour the water one block to the side of the pool's edge, or on a ledge just above it, so it spreads across the surface. Every lava source it touches turns to obsidian.
Mine it carefully. There is usually more lava underneath the fresh obsidian, so keep water flowing over the platform while you work; drops that land on flowing water survive instead of burning.

Which Pickaxe Can Mine Obsidian?

Pickaxe	Harvests Obsidian?
Wooden, stone, copper, iron or golden	No — the block breaks and drops nothing
Diamond	Yes
Netherite	Yes, and slightly faster

This is the mistake almost every new player makes once: the iron pickaxe will eventually break the block, but the obsidian simply vanishes. Even Silk Touch cannot save it — below diamond tier, the drop never happens. Obsidian is also slow to mine, taking several seconds per block, so bring patience along with the right pickaxe.

Other Ways to Get Obsidian

Ruined portals are framed in obsidian and generate in both the Overworld and the Nether, and they can be mined once you have that diamond pickaxe. Chests inside bastion remnants, Nether fortresses and village weaponsmith shops sometimes hold a few loose blocks. Piglins will occasionally throw you an obsidian block when bartering — roughly a one-in-twelve chance per gold ingot. For bulk supply, the End is unmatched: the ten obsidian pillars on the main island regenerate every time you respawn the Ender dragon, making them the closest thing to an obsidian farm the game offers.

What About Crying Obsidian?

The purple-veined variant cannot be crafted or made from lava. It only comes from ruined portals, bastion chests and piglin bartering, and it has a different job: it is the ingredient that, with glowstone, makes respawn anchors for setting your spawn point in the Nether. Do not substitute it into a Nether portal frame — a single crying obsidian block stops the portal from lighting.

What Obsidian Is Used For

The headline use is the Nether portal frame, which needs a minimum of ten blocks with the corners left out (fourteen for the full rectangle). Obsidian is also an ingredient in the enchanting table, the ender chest and the beacon. With a blast resistance of 1200, it is the strongest practical building block against creeper blasts, ghast fireballs and TNT, and pistons cannot push or pull it — a combination that makes it a favorite for blast-proofing farms and securing bases.